<div>I propose we bifurcate into two threads (both of which may be done!).</div>
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<div>1. Thesis: 64 bit good. We are all agreed now, case closed, IMO.</div>
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<div>2. Thesis: no group of human beings will ever directly author source code (meant to compile together) in excess of 4GB. </div>
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<div>I think we agree with RGB that 2 is irrelevant to 1. It may have some amusement value of it's own however, as RGB seems adamant to agree with Jon that 2) is true, when I have already proven it is false :-) So if we want to debate (2), independently of any concern about which CPU, 32 or 64, to choose for clusters, then by all means bring it on :-)
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<div>As Spock said in the "everyone is Evil parallel-universe" episode, "I have friends, and some of them are LOGICIANS".</div>
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<div>Incidentally, I had been, before this thread, sceptical about 64 bit myself. The killer app for me was RGB's reminder that it is good to fit an integer in a register. I astonished myself that my computer-brain had always interpreted 64-bit as the addressable space, subsuming my numerology-brain which could care less. So thanks for kicking me out of that prejudice. Also, my mind is a bit expanded now about what all the register might like to consider as in it's addressable range; and that's certainly more than 32 bit, altho in that sense 64 still seems kinda profligate to me.
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<div>But sure a team of humans can, will, and in some sense already has, and maybe even literally already has, written more or less coherent source > 4GB. Not that it matters to the word-size issue, which it does not.
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<div>Peter<br><br> </div>